James,
Lots of stuff for me to work on thanks for the help, I will let you know how I make out. I will try these techniques out Sunday.

30th May 2008 09:26 PM

James

Oh, and for when you're uphauling, there's two tricks to keep from rounding upwind.

1. From when you're first pulling rig out of the water until you put your front hand on the boom, you DO need your front foot in front of the mast base. And you can adjust the angle of the board upwind or downwind by putting more or less pressure on your front or back foot. Basically you just want to keep the board perpendicular to the wind.

2. When you're ready to put your back hand on the boom is the time to step your back foot back on the board. You can leave your front foot alongside or just behind the mast base, but point your toes forward towards the nose. At this point, if you just reach out and grab the boom with your back hand, you will round upwind. Instead, what you need to do is pull the rig up past 90 degrees vertical, over onto the upwind side of the board. With the sail in this position you should actually be able to look at the nose of the board through the clear part of the sail while standing behind the mast base. THEN you put your back hand on the boom and sheet in the way I described above. That should fix things.

30th May 2008 12:24 PM

James

If your front foot has to be placed near the mast foot, it probably means that you are not "hanging" from the sail enough to transfer weight into the mast foot itself.

Instead of muscling the sail with your back hand while standing heavy on the board, try sheeting in by pushing the sail away from you with you front hand and extending your body out over the water. That will take weight off of your feet and put it into the mast foot where it belongs. Mast track in the middle should be fine once you get the technique figured out.

Good luck!

30th May 2008 07:45 AM

tjanulis

Rounding Upwind

I have lately been having the problem that I round upwind in all but extremely low wind. I am sailing a 145 Carve with the fin it came with, a 520 Drake. I have been sailing in more aggresive conditions than in the past, and I am guessing that these problems never showed up because I was never pushing as much before. I often sail with either a 6.5 Gaastra or an 8.7 Gaastra Nitro. As soon as the the wind hits around 12+ knots the board wants to round up. Even when I try to uphaul, the board wants to spin right into the wind and stall. I have been successful at putting my front foot really far forward (in front of the mast base)to get the board going, and once on a plane I have to keep my front foot right by the mast base to keep the board from rounding up. I believe that it is a rigging/tuning error, because a week ago I rented a board from Calema, and had no problems, just great sailing. Ialso had someone else try my setup and they were feeling the same things that I felt. I tried moving the mast base from the center of the track forward, and all the way back, but it didn't seem to help.
Any suggestions or comment would be much appreciated.